Phillip--
        A flock of 41 trumpeter swans would be unprecedented in this part of
the country.
        On the other hand, 41 tundra swans that show no yellow on or near the
bill would be almost as amazing. This yellow patch is not always large
or evident, and it varies in size and sometimes is not discerniblen ,
but without a scope it's hard to be sure.
        This is a much-underestimated ID problem. If you have both species in
view, trumpeters are obviously larger in several ways.  Their
vocalizations are very different.  The other ID characters are iffy. See
the Trumpeter Swan Society's guide:
http://www.swansociety.org/docs/Swan_Goose_ID.pdf and practice with
known-identity birds, such as the breeeding trumpeters at Killdeer,
Ottawa, The Wilds and Shenango.
        Here in central OH, it helps to know their distribution and behavior.
All the trumpeter swans we see come from introduced populations. Wild
swans teach their offspring migration routes, but all the introduced
birds trace their ancestry back to eggs imported from Alaska that were
not reared by their parents. So midwestern swans do not migrate at all,
most of their winter movements consisting merely of retreats from frozen
water.  And this winter there has been no thick ice in Ohio, so I
wouldn't expect trumpeters to show up here away from their release areas
of fifteen years ago, the closest of which is Killdeer Plains Wildlife
Area, ~60 miles north.
        Regrettably, one of the easier ways to ID swans this time of year is to
offer them food; many, but not all, of the trumpeters will respond,
because they've learned to benefit from feeding; wild tundras from the
Arctic will spook. The introduction of our "wild" trumpeter swans was a
mistake, and in fact they are not "ambassadors for wetlands," but a
threat to them.  Have a look at all the ill effects attributed to the
exotic mute swan in an ODNR publication (at
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Home/wild_resourcessubhomepage/dealing_with_wildlifeplaceholder/terrestrialnuisancewildlife/MuteSwanActionPlan/tabid/22967/Default.aspx
) and you'll see the more or less equally locally common trumpeter swan
shares them all.
        Sorry for the long answer, but this winter has been so mild that arctic
species like tundra swans have found it easy to spend their winter here,
rather than heading down to coastal Carolina spots at they do normally,
and I suspect this accounts for their local numbers, including the ones
at Battelle Darby MP.
Bill Whan
Columbus


On 2/19/2012 4:16 PM, =?windows-1252?Q?Phillip_North?= wrote:
> Just got back from the Batelle Darby Creek Grain Elevator Wetlands
> southeast of Columbus and saw what i think were a flock of 41 Trumpeter
> Swans but someone else 2 days ago thought they were Tundras.  There was no
> yellow on the bills that i could see but if anyone is going out that way I
> would appreciate their opinion.


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